Failure to eject USB memory stick

Sometimes when I try to eject my USB memory stick, it fails and I receive the following warning( shown below). I don,t know what is the reason for that. It happens off and on and I have to remove it after shutting down windows.

 

Sorry that I could not do too much research on this. But something is accessing that stick. From what I have read, some anti-virus and anti-spyware apps will cause this. Try shutting them down temporarily, plus any other process that may be running from the task bar on the lower right.

I would spend more time on this, but I am on my way to a meeting.

 

Your hardware (USB) & or software will not support hot swapping.

Hot swapping
Term used to describe the act of removing or swapping a device when the portable computer is still on. Not all computers support hot swapping. If you are uncertain if your portable computer or hardware device supports hot swapping, we recommend you refer to the product documentation, contact the computer manufacturer, or warm swap.

 

But most of time I am able to do so, it,s only 10 % ot times I fail. It,s new for me that Notebooks don,t supporrt this function, never heard about that. I have XP Home SP2.
Also at that time USB stick is not in use. How I can know AV is accessing it and why it should do it when I ma not using it at that time.

 

When that happens to me I usually find that I still have the drive, or a file on it, displayed in explorer. Try closing explorer or selecting a differant drive and then eject the USB stick.

 

I think it was not with me like this all the time. Anyhow I will re-check.